I only stayed the Sunday night in Tilburg for this year’s Incubate festival since there were quite a lot of touristy things to do in Amsterdam. Posted here are the better photos among a few I took at the festival, just for the record.

Being a chronic ditherer with fairly eclectic music taste, I strode from venue to venue in an inane attempt to put the vast soundscape of the festival on shuffle, only to catch about 20 minutes of a set on average. After being scolded by my companion for my itchy feet dictated by my insatiable ears, I settled for Barn Owl forfeiting my Psychic Ills share. Sure enough, Barn Owl played an excellent set, but back home, I am constantly wondering if watching Elizabeth Hart in action would have done me better, more than just passing her by on the street (despite looking a bit neurotic, she had a 9.3 ass). The rest of the acts I saw live at the festival but you cannot see post-live in this post are Shannon & the Clams, Carlton Melton, White Manna, Ed Schrader’s Music Beat, AUS, and Shonen Knife, all of whom fervently contributed to a great time I had there.

Wish me wealth, health, and peace of mind, so that I can have a slightly higher chance of enjoying more live music soon enough in the environment where things like a Dead Moon t-shirt and a Sleep tote bag are righteous statement items.

About two years have past since my buddy Wookby‘s purchase of a domain and more than half a year since his pictorial recording of me in NYC but as is often the case with him, he has been doing practically nothing about them. Um nah, I stand corrected. It turned out that he was just fucking sluggish and didn’t really care about the dead money and my portrait rights.

He properly launched his blog today, perhaps, to repent of his negligence.
Pix are coming in. So visit his blog for your viewing pleasure. It’s free.

I’m still looking at you out of the corner of my eyes. You’re impenetrable, inhumanly impervious to all my cooing and wooing. I’m dreaming about gutting your concrete lovelessness and being reborn a twitching bacterial cog of your dinosaurian dynamo. It’s not because I’m itching to work in your stiff, uncaring bosom but because you are a high-maintenance cock-teaser. You’re white girls with jean shorts. You’re a heavenly peep show whose unwitting protagonists are scrambling to exit from the jerky stage of my paramount yen leaving a stinging sensation of earthly evanescence in my misty pupils. You’re fallen angels. You enabled me to put the flesh on many people who previously existed only on the internet. Some were better looking, some were not. I was lucky to watch Thurston Moore from a distance, although I missed his show. But he wasn’t most affecting. [ ] is. She was a Nico reincarnation. I’m hoping for April March. I read She’s living in NYC. And of course, I wouldn’t talk to her even if she is standing in front of me.

I burst out warm tears listening to this song. I’m depressed even though I’m twisting my muscles to “Fuck The Police”. Now “Gangsta, Gansta.” N.W.A., you’re wrong at least for one thing. It’s all about Salary, because that’s about Reality. I love your music but here’s hoping that I won’t stumble onto any N.W.A in Brooklyn. A lanky snoop doggish black dude taught me how to cancel a “Just Used” metro card the other day. When he touched my card, it felt like a layer of my security peeled away. He was rather coarse but turned out to be a nimble troubleshooter. Pardon me, I lied to you. I smoke. I didn’t say to you that I left my ciggarettes at home by mistake, which was true. I felt the need to spare the words. So don’t holler at me, like, “You lying chink”, if you ever see me smoking around Dekalb station. I’m good. I’m going to quit smoking, not masturbating. Thee Oh Sees@Death By Audio soon.

Photo: UT. haven’t seen this variety of hipsters yet. Perhaps they were extinct a long while ago.

Today I had my third waking up in NYC. Lots of things happened over those four days. I’m getting less and less terrified to be here despite never being free from the feeling of being threatened for the financial reason. Thank Craig and my lucky star, I finally scored a reasonably priced (by NYC standard) room that’s coveniently located near Dekalb Avenue station in Bushwick. I thought it would be impossible for me to rent a room off Craigslist. * Do the math: A Korean + A tourist; They simply don’t reply back. In time, I became wise enough to obscure my ethincity and status, simply referring to me as “A tourist”. I gather that’s the tactic that worked a miracle for me. So no more passive racist aggressions to go through – Well, some may be lurking around the nooks and crannies of my American life. But fuck them all anyways !!!

In other words, I don’t have to lodge in this congested Korean guest house in Bushwick as of 6/12 (actually, this place is quite alright but expensive) but I’m still very anxious to land a dishwasher position or whatever SSN-free job. Rent is rocketing high but if I keep eating less and in, the cost of living in NYC shouldn’t be lethal. I haven’t seen any shows yet, not that I eagerly want to see any. In NYC, watching people seems to be more entertaining than going to shows. Besides, by my reckoning, there hasn’t been any decent show recently. But a weekend always has some for sure. Originally I marked 6/1o of the calendar in my mind as Endless Boogie/Purling Hiss @ Death By Audio day (and it’s for just $7 !!!). But varaibles came into play as time passed by. I went and roamed about Bedford Avenue alone yesterday, and I think I saw a flyer that advertised a MV Carbon 6/10 show at Secret Project Robot. Maybe it was last year’s since I couldn’t find anything about it on the internet. But instead…. I happened upon this:

Friday June 10th, 2011 – Opening nite party at LIVE WITH ANIMALS
Garbage River (featuring Timmy Vulgar & Jimbo Easter)
+ special guest: Sightings
DJ Acapulco Rodriguez (been curious as to what he looks like)

Sounds very termbo but looks very billyburg hipster-ish. This show isn’t even on Ohmyrockness and termbo. So they must like it rather private. Outliers like myself might be unwelcome. But holy crap, Sightings !!! How many years I’ve been sighing for their live shows !!! However, I have likely the most important game going on: Getting laid. The story is, on Wednesday night, more or less bored, nothing to do, I headed for a bar in Williamsburg to drink a plastic cup of 32 oz 4$ budlight, on my own (natch). I lucked into an American girl at this bar and we ended up making out heavily but to my chagrin I was prohibited from putting a full ejaculatory stop by the girl herself who cornered me in the first place (You know, I’m a fucking nerd. Passive. Defensive. I don’t have a way with girls). But that’s not the end of the story. I believe, we agreed to hang out on Friday which is Today. I want to do her badly. If I succeed, that will be my first lay in like forever (I shift the blame on those prudent, demanding Korean girls who are prone to becoming disarmed and docile in the presence of moderately good looking White males). I have to follow whatever direction my dick swings until she flakes on me, and in my vivacious world of imagination, I’m already bedding with her. Since I don’t make her out to be a hipster, it won’t be a good idea to go one of these two shows together. In any case, today is gonna be a blast. I think I even have an option of bringing my Korean friend (Sorry Areum, you know this is not the way I am… I am just…) to this show – well, I’m obviously tilted toward the Sightings show, in the event that I’m spurned by the girl in question.

And you fucking NY hipsters and music nerds, please don’t give me such uncomfortable looks even if you spot me at your favourite clannish hang-out. I just want to enjoy music in the flesh. Well, maybe that’s not all.

Unless a calamity strikes the planet earth, I’ll have set foot in America by the evening of the 7th of June with the most rustic F.O.B. awe you can imagine. And I shouldn’t look back from there. This America is the best representative of her in my paltry knowledge, namely NYC where I will take advantage of its noted public transportation system and hopefully a fragment of opportunities that I believe are being hatched even at this writ(h)ing under its broad cityscape.

No romantist fantasy involved – I clearly know what I signed for: a warts-and-all cinema verite without any artistic value and possible release date. I had been vegetated by my fatalistic despair and insurmountable ugly desires but eventually opted for a deadly venture to there (move!) instead of a tepid death to my being in here fucking Korea. This choice, disgracefully squeezed out of the ashen skin of my corporeal life, was almost inevitable (I have nothing to lose. So don’t call me a loser). Why it’s deadly?; For practical purposes, I have no contacts in NYC (cue Bourdieu) and I couldn’t afford even a student visa, which means I am not equipped with a proper means to legitimately survive out there and that’s the background from which I come to this point; I must land whatever gig that’s available to me as an alien ASAP, so if you happen to stock any handsomely entwined ropes to tie my american livelihood – in your warehouse, attic, toilet, wherever they might be, please show me. I’m a responsible, punctual, industrious worker of strong working class ethic trained in a variety of menial manual labor (mostly for $4 an hour, no kidding !!!) and there’ll be no language barrier for sure. Bussing tables, washing dishes, mopping the floor, housekeeping, schlepping goods, bike messaging, feeding your cute wayward iguana, dumping garbage … If you ever take on me, I’ll perform my duty like a bulimic scarfs food ! For goodness’ sake, spare me from serving in a Korean restaurant with my beautiful hair cut and the dread of encountering yet another SSN monster on Craigslist. And importantly, don’t forget that I’m a fucking hipster. My blurb about your new album would have a greater level of crafty bluff and be capable of ringing up more $ on your part than any blurb your lazy friend comes up with skipping your record stoned.

I hope this letter will appeal to latent sympathy and streaming kindness in your heart in a wakingly positive and warmly captivating way. I’m such a fuck up that I’m afraid I don’t have anything to give you in return if you extended your hand of Midas to the leaden passage of my immediate future. But don’t people donate to Japan Relief or something like that? In my understanding, this is a bigger, graver cause with no need to use money. So why not? And who knows? I might tattoo your saintly name on the left side of my chest. Think of all the great relationships the internet ever enabled you to have and shed your bashfulness for the time being, and then contemplate my email address slackchappie@hotmail.com. You know what you wanna do.